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Friday, May 15, 2015

Subcommittee Amends and Adopts CBRN Intel Bill

Yesterday the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness,
Response, and Communications of the House Homeland Security Committee passed
two amendments to HR 2200,
the CBRN Intelligence and Information
Sharing Act of 2015 by voice vote and then recommended the bill to the full
Committee.

The first
amendment was the substitute language from Chair McSally (R,AZ) that I
described in an
earlier post. The second amendment was offered by Rep. Payne (D,NJ), the
Ranking Member of the Subcommittee. That amendment
added local public health departments to the agencies to be notified of CBRN information
developed by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis of the Department of
Homeland Security.

As I mentioned
earlier while this legislation is billed as chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear intelligence bill, it is clear that the main focus is
actually biological attacks. I understand the concern with the consequences of
a successful bio-attack it still takes a great deal of sophistication to
execute an attack of this sort, much more sophistication than it takes to
conduct an attack with industrial chemicals.

About Me

I spent 15 years in the US Army as an Infantry NCO. After getting out of the Army I started working in the chemical industry, getting my BSc Chemistry degree while working as a technician. I spent 12 years working as a process chemist in a specialty chemical company. Most recently I worked as a QA/R&D Manager in a specialty chemical manufacturing facility. Currently I am working as a freelance writer.